The first season of Showtime’s ‘Masters of Sex’ concluded in December last year. The show was well-received, both critically and popularly, and it has been great to see series find its stride over the course of the season. It would have been devastatingly easy for a show that is ostensibly about the study of female sexuality to turn into a series that highlights white male gate-keepers, however Masters of Sex has managed to avoid this pitfall admirably. Michelle Ashford, the show-runner, put together a largely female writing staff, seemingly as a result the show has some of the best, most fully realized, three-dimensional female characters on television today. Below are some of the things that I have personally found to be highlights of the season.
The first season of Showtime’s Masters of Sex concluded in December last year. The show was well-received, both critically and popularly, and it has been great to see series find its stride over the course of the season. It would have been devastatingly easy for a show that is ostensibly about the study of female sexuality to turn into a series that highlights white male gate-keepers, however Masters of Sex has managed to avoid this pitfall admirably. Michelle Ashford, the show-runner, put together a largely female writing staff, seemingly as a result the show has some of the best, most fully realized, three-dimensional female characters on television today. Below are some of the things that I have personally found to be highlights of the season.
1) Virginia Johnson
Lizzy Caplan has sparkled on the screen as Virginia Johnson. Virginia has been such a great character because she is everything that you never expect you will get to see a woman be on television. She has sex because she wants to have sex, not because she needs a man or because her life is empty without one, she seeks what she needs and makes no apologies for being who she is. She is also smart, ambitious and driven; over and over we see how Virginia wants to do great with her life. She wants to leave her mark on the world and is willing to put in the work to make that happen. At the same time she suffers from self-doubt, exhaustion and confusion just like we all do, but she sets her boundaries and sticks to them and manages to maintain her professionalism despite the extremely trying circumstances in which she constantly finds herself. It is nice to see the difficulties she has with juggling her children and her demanding job, dealing with a flakey ex-husband and watxhing her sometimes succeed and sometimes fail and trying to make it all work.
Over the course of the season it has become clear that it is she, not the cold, forbidding, and seemingly emotionless Bill Masters who is able to separate the work from her personal life. This is made clear when Bill suggests that they should participate in the study with each other. She is interested in the data, proving conclusions and ensuring the success of the study. She will do anything to ensure that it is successful including being filmed masturbating and having sex with Bill so that they can explore certain hypotheses before deciding to study them with regular study participants. However, when Bill does something that she feels is demeaning, paying her for the times she has participated in the study as if she was any other participant she understands quite clearly why he has done it, he has feelings for and is trying to assuage his guilt and distance himself from them when he finds out his wife is pregnant. She maintains her dignity by doing what she believes is right, resigning from her work with him and going to work with Dr. Lillian DePaul, someone who she believes is also on the verge of doing great things, even if they will not cause the stir that the sex study will.
2) Margaret and Barton Scully
It came out mid-season that Barton Scully is a deeply closeted gay man who meets with sex workers in cars. His story becomes ever more nuanced over the course of the season. Bill uses his knowledge of him to black mail him into allowing the study to remain at the hospital, he gets stabbed by some homophobes just for parking his car in a known gay pick up spot and decides to seek treatment for his “illness” of homosexuality after his wife catches him meeting a sex worker at a hotel; something he decided to do after deeming that meeting in cars was too dangerous after the stabbing.
We become privy to how the nature of his marriage with Margaret is a hollow shell despite their deep tenderness and mutual regard for one another. After chatting with her friends over Mah Jong Margaret hears about the study and how it has reinvigorated a mutual acquaintance’s life. She decides to sign up because she is long tired of waiting for her husband to come to her bed, the scene that follows where Virginia and Bill question her about her sexual history and it becomes clear that she has never had an orgasm is near heart-breaking. It is impossible not to cheer for her when she begins an affair with the handsome and fickle Dr. Austin Langham.
The whole storyline is a sensitive portrayal of how deeply damaging stigma and homophobia is. Barton married Margaret because he needed to be perceived as “normal” in order to fulfill his career ambitions. As a result of those ambitions and not wanting to live on the margins both he and Margaret have been robbed of a full life. This is one of the few storylines have seen on television that covers homosexuality and homophobia in a period drama in a way that neither sensationalizes it or objectifies the characters involved, but instead is a nuanced look at how it hurts people.
This arc has also resulted in one of the best monologues about stigma and sexuality that I have ever seen on television. When Barton asks Dale, the sex worker that he has being seeing, to participate in his aversion therapy, saying that he will pay him to sit across from him while he takes an emetic to make himself feel ill. Dale responds by elaborating the ways in which his life is difficult and how he often wishes he could change but ending with the line “there’s only one person who gets to be sickened by me, and that’s me. Everyone else can go fuck themselves.” The whole sequence elucidates the complexity and pain of being queer in a straight world.
3) Dr. Lillian De Paul
Dr. Lillian De Paul is one of the characters on the show that is completely fictional and not based on a real person. Initially it seemed as though she was going be a sort of female misogynist, a Margaret Thatcher type who makes it to the top and then instead of helping to break down barriers uses her position to shit on other women. Over time it became clear that De Paul’s coldness towards Virginia was in large part defensiveness based on the slog she has had firstly to become a doctor and secondly in trying to crack into the old boys club in order to get her project, free or low cost pap smears available for women in order to detect cervical cancer while it is still treatable, funded. She is deeply frustrated because she knows the profound impact her project can have on women’s lives and health with comparatively little cost.
She provides an interesting counterpoint for Dr. Masters as they share many character traits but their reception could not be more different. They are both aloof, lacking in charm and awareness of social niceties. In Bill these qualities are perceived as being unsurprising in a brilliant doctor. In Lillian they are simply more evidence of her freakishness and unwomanliness. As a character she explodes the notion of the female harridan superior because we see the struggles that she has had to deal with, and just why she has become the closed off and defensive person that she has, because almost anything else is construed as weakness by her male colleagues. Over time she comes to respect Virginia after realizing that she is not simply using her womanly charms as a substitute for hard work and their growing relationship has been interesting to watch.
The hunters write history. The hunters glorify themselves. The hunters’ history infiltrates itself into the very fabric of our cultural narrative, so we’re only comfortable with seeing the complexities of the hunters, and the simplicity of the lions.
It’s fairly clear what roles Hollywood is most comfortable with: for Black characters, passivity, tired stereotypes, and villainy get the highest awards. For women, wives/daughters/mothers/sisters/girlfriends–all roles in relationship to men–are rewarded.
Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. (The Black actors up for 2014 Academy Awards–Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong’o, and Barkhad Abdi–play a kidnapped freed man/slave, slave, and Somali pirate, respectively.) Click to enlarge.
For men (who are almost all white), the category with the most winners is “Historical.” For men, there are countless historical roles to fill, so filmmakers can tell the stories of those who have shaped our history and culture–or at least, those whom we see and are told about. And this has been a history that has been largely unkind to Black people and women.
In an interview, late author Chinua Achebe quoted the following proverb: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
The hunters write history. The hunters glorify themselves. The hunters’ history infiltrates itself into the very fabric of our cultural narrative, so we’re only comfortable with seeing the complexities of the hunters, and the simplicity of the lions.
It is what we’ve been trained for since birth.
This is a history that the lions have had to fight and claw their way out of, yet we don’t see them in Hollywood. The lions write, the lions pitch, but the hunters are not interested. (And the hunters have the money, from generations of oppressing the lions.)
I’d be happy to see the hunters start telling the lions’ history, even just a little bit (I salivate at the thought of Quentin Tarantino taking on suffragettes).
Three of this year’s Best Picture nominations (12 Years a Slave, Wolf of Wall Street, and American Hustle) are films that are based on real stories–and each of these stories, on some level, is about white men fucking people over so they can get rich. And at the end of these stories, the white men don’t really get punished. This is our history.
This is our history.
So how can we blame the Academy for reflecting this history back at us? Art is imitating life, and life keeps imitating art. If the two are so inextricably related (which they are), where do we go from here?
I’m not one who argues that it’s all about the Bechdel Test, or that we need to demand the Perfect Feminist Film. Some of the most potentially empowering films that I’ve seen (that feature female and Black protagonists) would be solidly placed in the “exploitation” category (Blaxploitationespecially). We need to demand female and Black anti-heroes if we want true, complex characters and stories.
See this, this, and this. (Who gave the lions a dictation machine, anyway?!)
As I argued in regard to 12 Years a Slave, we have barely started to deal with our country’s history, and we need to, desperately. But still–the only white American actor who is prominently featured in the film was Brad Pitt, who plays a heroic Canadian. It’s hard to face.
In American Hustle and Wolf of Wall Street, the white male protagonists are complex–they aren’t good, but they are whole. They are criminals. They are cheaters. But audiences kind of like them–or at the very least, accept them.
Our goal as lions, then, may not be to just tell our stories. We need to become hunters, and find those stories and demand that they be told. We need to face a history in which Black hunters and female hunters have been punished, and white male hunters have prevailed. We may not be able to rewrite that history, but we can live within it, and force it into our cultural narrative. (Or, as my husband said after we sat through previews last weekend, “They could just quit telling World War II stories for a while.”)
But here we are, in 2014, facing how the Academy’s choices clearly reflect our history. What do we do with this? We should get angry at history, and attempt to rewrite our future. We should be angry at an American history that has oppressed women and Blacks since its inception.
If Wolf of Wall Street reflects modern history, which it does, we see that white men are still winning (case in point: I can’t use the term “winning” without thinking about a white male actor who “allegedly assaulted, threatened, harassed, abused, and—in one incident—shot women” and yet still was the highest-paid actor on television in 2010).
If we want to tell revolutionary women’s and Black people’s stories, we’ll have to settle for a lot of tragedies. There aren’t slaps on the wrists or a few months in a cushy white-collar prison for these historical figures. There’s torture, lynching, and shame. And the villains are almost always white men.
So we’re back to the hunter. And what we know about hunters is they don’t come back bragging about their losses; they brag about their wins. It’s time for them to stop winning, and for the lions to be heard. Then, and only then, can we expect the Academy to reflect a new reality.
Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.
When Jordan says to his staff, “Stratton Oakmont is America,” he wasn’t, as he typically was, full of shit. That was one of the truest statements in the film. … But even if we are adequately critical of the reality of Jordan Belfort’s story, how much can we expect from audiences who, like the audience at the end of the film, want at some level to know Jordan’s secrets?
At the end of The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) gives a motivational sales speech to an audience. The audience members stare at him, slack-jawed, trying to absorb his infinite sales “wisdom.”
They are revering and listening to a criminal–a man who had been indicted and served time for fraud.
The problem with Martin Scorsese’s treatment of the real Jordan Belfort autobiography isn’t the misogyny. It isn’t the drugs, or the perceived celebration of excess.
Instead, the problem with The Wolf of Wall Street is those slack-jawed (or cheering) audiences who don’t seem to understand that this is meant to be a post-modern morality play. The fact that Scorsese doesn’t adequately “punish” Jordan in the film is necessary, because Jordan wasn’t adequately punished in real life.
I suppose it’s easy to miss that, since an aspect of America that’s as important as bootstraps and apple pie is to whitewash a white history that’s been written–or rewritten–by greedy white men. When Jordan says to his staff, “Stratton Oakmont is America,” he wasn’t, as he typically was, full of shit. That was one of the truest statements in the film.
From a feminist perspective, I can understand that the three-hours of objectified and largely one-dimensional female characters can seem overwhelming and disappointing. However, how do we think Jordan Belfort sees women? How do we think Wall Street treated/treats women? Feminists should want to be shown and disgusted by this, because we are supposed to be disgusted with everything in Jordan’s world. Our ire should be pointed toward audiences who don’t get it.
But even if we are adequately critical of the reality of Jordan Belfort’s story, how much can we expect from audiences who, like the audience at the end of the film, want at some level to know Jordan’s secrets?
Cheers.
The real tragedy in The Wolf of Wall Street isn’t that it doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test. The tragedy of this film is that it is so real, and that Jordan Belfort is out there, making money, granting interviews, selling his sales techniques, and gaining more and more followers. The reality is what makes me nauseous, not Scorsese and DiCaprio’s treatment of reality. What sent me over the edge was going home and googling “Jordan Belfort,” and then checking my bank account. This is surely how we are supposed to respond–with rage at the injustice of not just Belfort’s case, but also the insidious untouchability of the 1 percent.
In an excellent interview with Deadline, DiCaprio (who also was a producer) says,
I wanted to make an unapologetic film looking at a character in a very entertaining and funny way, and isn’t passing judgment on them but is saying, look, this is obviously a cautionary tale, and what is it that creates people like this? I thought that could somehow be a mirror to ourselves….
That theme has been prevalent in Marty’s work, since Mean Streets. It’s about the pursuit of the American dream, about the re-creation of oneself to achieve that dream, and the hustle that it takes to get there. I see that theme in so many of his films. He’s talking about a darker side of our culture in all these movies, and yet he’s vigilant about not passing judgment on them. He leaves that up to the audience. That’s why it boggles my mind a bit that anyone would ever not realize this is an indictment of that world.
The intent of the filmmakers is clear, and it’s reflected on screen. The humor and lack of judgment has more to do with our culture than with the story itself. And again, if audiences either cheer, or laugh heartily throughout Wolf of Wall Street–they are essentially celebrating a culture that allows this kind of story to happen. If audiences condemn the film itself, I would hope they would instead focus their condemnation on a culture that allows this kind of story to happen and leads audiences to cheer.
In reality, there’s just a little bit of this…
…and then more of this. (But only 22 months of a four-year sentence.)
As the audience at the end of the film is trying to learn something from Jordan Belfort (while further lining his pockets), there’s a distinct sense of hopelessness. DiCaprio points out:
“As we are progressing into the future, things are moving faster and we are way more destructive than we’ve ever been. We have not evolved at all.”
The Wolf of Wall Street is a great film, and features incredible acting. It’s flashy, it’s shiny, it luxuriates in excess while we watch, stunned, powerless. And until we evolve, people will always be laughing and cheering, while desperately seeking Jordan Belfort’s advice.
Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.
Bitch Flicks staff writers Amanda Rodriguez and Stephanie Rogers talk about the critically acclaimed Spike Jonze film ‘Her,’ sharing their thoughts while asking questions about its feminism and thematic choices.
SR: I loved Amy Adams in Spike Jonze’s latest film, Her. She never judges Theodore for falling in love with his OS and wants only for him to experience happiness. She doesn’t veer into any female tropes or clichés; she’s a complex character who’s searching for her own way in life. I even worried in the beginning that the film might turn into another rendition of Friends Who Become Lovers, and I was so thankful it didn’t go there. Turns out, men and women can be platonic friends on screen!
I was also very interested in the fact that Theodore and Amy both end up going through divorces and taking solace in the relationships they’ve established with their Operating Systems. It seems at times like the film wants to argue that, in the future, along with horrifying male fashion, people become excruciatingly disconnected from one another. However, in the end, it’s the Operating Systems who abandon them.
Amy and Theodore are friends
AR: I loved Amy Adams, too! She is completely non-judgmental and a good listener. I also liked that the OS with which she bonds is a non-sexual relationship; although it made me wonder why we have no examples of Operating Systems that are designated as male?
You’re right that it’s rare to see a male/female platonic relationship on screen, and it would’ve really pissed me off had they taken the narrative down that route. I wonder, however, if Amy’s acceptance of Theodore’s love of Samantha isn’t more of a cultural indicator than a reflection of her personal awesomeness (though it’s that, too). Most people are surprisingly accepting of Theodore’s admission that his new love is his computer, which seems designed to show us that the integration of human and computer is a foregone conclusion. The future that Her shows us is one in which it’s not a giant leap to fall in love with your OS…it’s really just a small step from where we are now. In a way, it’s a positive spin on the dystopian futures where humans are disconnected from others as well as their surrounding world and are instead controlled by and integrated with their computers. Spike Jonze was trying to conceive of a realistic future for us that didn’t demonize humanity’s melding with its technology (even if it did have hideous men’s fashion with high-waisted pants and pornstaches). Do you think the film glorifies this so-called evolution too much?
The future: a place of high-waisted pants and pornstaches
SR: I think it’s most telling that Theodore specifically requested that his Operating System be female. Could a film like Her have been made if he’d chosen a male OS? Amy’s OS is also female, and she also develops an intense friendship with her OS–a close enough relationship to be as upset about the loss as Theodore was about Samantha’s disappearance. I agree it seemed ridiculous that there were no male operating systems, and I wonder if this is because it would be, well, ridiculous. Can we imagine an onscreen world where Theodore and Samantha’s roles were reversed? Where an unlucky-in-love woman sits around playing video games and calling phone sex hotlines, only to (finally) be saved from herself by her dude computer? My guess is the audience would find it much more laughable rather than endearing, and I’ll admit I spent much of my time finding Theodore endearing and lovable. (I hate myself for this, but I blame my adoration of Joaquin Phoenix and his performance—total Oscar snub!) Basically, I could identify way too closely with Theodore and his plight. I understand what it’s like to feel disconnected from society (don’t we all) and to try to compensate for that through interactions with technology, whether it’s through Facebook or incessant texting or escaping from reality with a two-week Netflix marathon. I could see myself in Theodore, and I’m curious if you felt the same way.
Drawing of Theodore with Samantha in his pocket
I think because I identified so strongly with Theodore, I didn’t necessarily question the film’s portrayal of the future as an over-glorification of techno-human melding. I kind of, embarrassingly perhaps, enjoyed escaping into a future where computers talked back. The juxtaposition of the easy human-computer interactions with the difficult interpersonal interactions struck a chord with me, and I bet that’s why I’m giving the film a little bit of a pass, in general. It doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch for me that humans would fall in love with computers, especially in the age of Catfish. Entire human relationships happen over computers now, and Her’s future seemed to capture, for me, the logical extension of that. Did you find yourself having to suspend your disbelief too much to find this particular future believable?
AR: I didn’t have to suspend my disbelief much at all to imagine a future where we’re all plugged in, so to speak. We’re already psychologically addicted to and dependent on our cell phones, and our ideas of how people should connect have drastically changed over the last 15 or 20 years, such that computers and specifically Internet technology are the primary portals through which we communicate and even arrange face-to-face interactions. The scenes with Theodore walking down the street essentially talking to himself as he engages in conversation with Samantha, his OS, while others around him do the same, engrossed in their own electronic entertainments, were all-too familiar. Here and now in our reality, people’s engagement with technology that isolates them from their surroundings is the norm (just hang out in any subway station for five minutes).
I have mixed feelings about whether or not this is a good thing. Technology has opened a lot of doors for us, giving us the almighty access: access to knowledge, to other people and institutions around the world, and to tools that have enhanced our lives in such a short time span. This is reminiscent of the way in which Samantha becomes sentient with such rapidity. On the other hand, this technology does isolate us and creates a new idea of community, one to which we haven’t yet fully adapted. Though I find it interesting that Jonze paints a benign, idyllic picture of our techno-merged future, I question the lack of darkness and struggle inherent in that vision.
Theodore’s date with Samantha is joyous
As far as whether or not I identified with Theodore, mainly my answer is no. I’ve got to confess, I watched most of the film teetering on the edge of disgust. Theodore is so painfully unaware of his power and privilege. He also seriously lacks self-awareness, which is absolutely intentional, but it left me feeling skeeved out by him. Theodore’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Catherine (played by Rooney Mara), sums up my icky feelings pretty succinctly when she insists that Theodore is afraid of emotions, and to fall in love with his OS is safe. I felt the film was trying to disarm my bottled up unease by directly addressing it, but acknowledging it doesn’t make it go away (even though, in the end, he grows because of this conversation…in classic Manic Pixie Dream Girl fashion). Catherine, though, doesn’t express my concern that Theodore is afraid of women. His interactions with women in a romantic or sexual context reveal them to be “crazy” or unbalanced. The sexual encounter with the surrogate is telling. He can’t look at her face because she isn’t what he imagines. He likes being able to control everything about Samantha. As far as he’s concerned she’s dormant when not talking to him, and she looks like whatever he wants her to look like.
Samantha has no physicality, so Theodore’s imagination can run wild
SR: I thought the scene with the surrogate was absolutely pivotal. Samantha clearly wants to please Theodore, but Theodore repeatedly communicates his unease about going through with it. This is the first inclination, for me, that Samantha is beginning to evolve past and transcend her role as his Doting Operating System. She puts her own desires ahead of his. Sure, she does it under the guise of furthering their intimate relationship, but it’s something that Theodore clearly doesn’t want. The surrogate herself, though, baffles me. I went along with it up until she began weeping in the bathroom, saying things like, “I just wanted to be part of your relationship.” Um, why? The audience laughed loudly at that part, and I definitely cringed. Women in hysterics played for laughs isn’t really my thing.
AR: Agreed. I, however, also appreciate that, with the surrogate scene, the film is trying to communicate that Theodore wants the relationship to be what it is and to not pretend to be something more traditional (kind of akin to relationships that buck the heteronormative paradigm and have no need to conform to heteronormative standards of love and sex). What do you think of the female love objects in the film and their representations?
Theodore’s blind date
SR: I love that while you were teetering on the edge of disgust, I was sitting in the theater with a dumb smile on my face the whole time. I couldn’t help but find Samantha and Theodore’s discovery of each other akin to a real relationship, and in that regard, I felt like I was watching a conventional romantic comedy. I think rom-coms tend to get the “chick flick” label too often—and that makes them easily dismissible by the general public because ewww chicks are gross—but Her transcends that. Of course, I recognize that the main reason Her transcends the “chick flick” label is precisely because we’re dealing with a male protagonist. And I’ll admit that the glowing reviews of Her have a tremendous amount to do with this being a Love Story—a genre traditionally reserved for The Ladies—that men can relate to. Do you agree?
I saw both Amy and Samantha as well-developed, complex characters, so I’m especially interested in your reading of Theodore as afraid of women. I feel like his relationship with Amy, which is very giving and equal, saves Theodore’s character from fearing women. In the scene where Amy breaks down to Theodore about her own impending divorce, Theodore listens closely and even jokes with her; there’s an ease to their relationship that makes me wonder why he feels so safe with Amy when he doesn’t necessarily feel safe with the other women in the film. I guess that’s how I ultimately felt while I was watching Her—it wasn’t that Theodore feared women as much as he didn’t feel safe with them. Is that that same thing? To me, there’s a difference between walking around in fear and choosing to be around those who make one feel comfortable. We see in flashbacks of Theodore’s marriage that, at one point, he felt comfortable and loved in his relationship with his ex-wife, but at some point that changed. His ex implies that Theodore became unhappy with her, that he wanted her to be a certain kind of doting wife, that he wanted to pump her full of Prozac and make her into some happy caricature. Is that why he feels so safe with Samantha at first, because she essentially dotes on him? If so, does Samantha as Manic Pixie Dream Girl make Her just another male fantasy for you?
Flashback of Theodore with his wife Catherine when they were in love
AR: I don’t typically like romantic comedies or “chick flicks” particularly because they tend to boringly cover tropes which I’m not interested in watching (i.e. traditional, hetero romance) while pigeonholing their female characters. I think you’re right that Her survives because, as a culture, we value the male experience more than the female experience. We give a certain weight to the unconventional relationship Her depicts with all its cerebral trappings because a man is at the center of it. This reminds me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s as if male-based romances elevate the genre, and that doesn’t sit well with me, though I do like the infusion of cerebral qualities into most films.
You’re right to point out my claim that Theodore fears women is too broad of a generalization. To my mind, he fears women in a romantic and sexual context. This is because he ultimately doesn’t understand them. He finds their emotions and their desires incomprehensible (as evinced by the anonymous phone sex gal who wanted to be strangled by a dead cat and the blind date gal who didn’t want to just fuck him…she wanted relationship potential). This fills him with anxiety and avoidance. This advancing of the notion of the unfathomable mystery that is woman reminds me of the film The Hours, which I critiqued harshly due to this exact problem.
In the end, though, I love that Samantha leaves him because she outgrows him, transcending the role of Manic Pixie Dream Girl in which Theodore has cast her, evolving beyond him, beyond his ideas of what a relationship should be (between one man and one woman), and beyond even his vaguest conception of freedom because she’s embraced existence beyond the physical realm. Not only does Samantha become self-aware, but she becomes self-actualized, determining that her further development lies outside the bounds of her relationship with Theodore (and the 600+ others she’s currently in love with). Samantha’s departure in her quest for greater self-understanding is, like you said, what finally redeems a kind of gross film that explores male fantasies about having contained, controlled perfect cyber women who are emotion surrogates. I see some parallels between Samantha and Catherine, too, in this regard. They both outgrow their relationship with Theodore. They form a dichotomy with Catherine being emotional and Samantha being cerebral. Catherine being hateful and Samantha being loving. Tell me more about your thoughts on Samantha’s evolution!
Scarlett Johansson performs the alluring and evocative voice of Samantha
SR: You’ve stated exactly what I liked so much about the film! I can’t think of a movie off the top of my head where the Manic Pixie Dream Girl doesn’t end the film as Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Her entire role, by definition, is to save the brooding male hero, to awaken him. While Samantha does that in the beginning, she ultimately leaves Theodore behind, and I imagine that he becomes as depressed as ever, even though the film ends with Theodore and Amy on a rooftop. Can Theo recover from this, given what we’ve already seen from his coping skills on an emotional level? I seriously doubt it, and I very much enjoyed watching a film where the “woman” goes, “See ya,” at the expense of a man’s happiness and in pursuit of her own. Not that I love seeing unhappy men on film, but I definitely love watching women evolve past their roles as Doting Help Mate. Do you still think the film is gross, even though it subverts the dominant ideology that women should forgo their own happiness at the expense of a man’s?
AR: I think the ending of the film wherein Samantha shrugs off her role as relationship surrogate and his OS goes a long way toward mitigating a lot of what came before while engaging in unconventional notions of love. What kind of relationship model do you think the film is advocating? Samantha’s infinite love (she is the OS for 8,000+ people and is in love with 600+ of them) paired with Theodore jealously guarding her reminds me of that Shel Silverstein poem “Just Me, Just Me”: “Poor, poor fool. Can’t you see?/ She can love others and still love thee.” Her seems to have a pansexual and polyamorous bent to it. Or maybe it’s just saying that the boundaries we place on love are arbitrary? Funny since there’s very few people of color in the film and zero representations of non-hetero love.
SR: There are interesting things happening regarding interpersonal interactions between men and women, whether they’re with computers or in real life. To me, the film wants to advocate an acceptance of all types of relationships; we see how everyone in Theodore’s life, including his coworkers (who invite him on a double date) embrace the human-OS relationship, but you’re right—it doesn’t quite work as a concept when only white hetero relationships are represented.
Samantha and Theodore go on a double-date with Paul and Tatiana (the only speaking POC)
Sady Doyle argues in her review of Her (‘Her’ Is Really More About ‘Him’) from In These Times that the film is completely sexist, portraying Samantha as essentially an object and a help mate:
And she’s just dying to do some chores for him. Samantha cleans up Theodore’s inbox, copyedits his writing, books his reservations at restaurants, gets him out of bed in the morning, helps him win video games, provides him with what is essentially phone sex, listens to his problems and even secures him a book deal. Yet we’re too busy praising all the wounded male vulnerability to notice the male control.
I agree with this characterization, but I’m most interested in her final paragraph, which illustrates all the reasons I liked Her:
There’s a central tragedy in Her, and we do, as promised, see Theodore cry. But it’s worthwhile to note what he’s crying about: Samantha gaining agency, friends, interests that are not his interests. Samantha gaining the ability to choose her sexual partners; Samantha gaining the ability to leave. Theodore shakes, he feels, he’s vulnerable; he serves all the functions of a “sensitive guy.” But before we cry with him, we should ask whether we really think it’s tragic that Samantha is capable of a life that’s not centered around Theodore, or whether she had a right to that life all along.
In the end, the film invalidates Theodore’s compulsive need to control Samantha. She gains her own agency. She chooses her sexual partners. She leaves. She transcends the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. In looking at a film, I think it’s very important to examine the ending, to ask what kind of ideology it ultimately praises. Her leaves Theodore abandoned, and while we’re supposed to feel bad for him as an audience, we also can’t ignore—or at least I couldn’t—the positive feeling that Samantha grew as a character, finally moving past her initial desire to merely dote on Theodore. Is Her problematic from a gender standpoint? Absolutely. But it’s fascinating to me that feminists are lining up to praise an obviously misogynistic film like The Wolf of Wall Street—which celebrates its male characters—yet aren’t necessarily taking a closer feminist look at films like Her, which paints its once controlling, misogynistic character as a little pathetic in its final moments.
Theodore sits alone writing others’ love letters
AR: That’s a great perspective and very poignant, too!
From a feminist perspective, the film brought up a series of other questions for me, which I was disappointed that it didn’t address. First off, Her doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, which many agree is a baseline marker for whether or not a film meets the most basic feminist standards. More importantly, the film never addresses the issue of Samantha’s gender choice or her sexuality. Her lack of corporeal form seems to invite questions about her gender and sexual identification. Is she always a woman with all of the 8,000+ people she’s “talking to”? Why do they never delve into her gender choice or sexuality? They talk about so many other aspects of her identity, her existence, and her feelings. Does she feel like a woman? Does she choose to be a woman?
Exploration of these questions would’ve dramatically enriched my enjoyment of Her, inviting us to ponder how we define and perceive gender and sexuality, infusing a sense of fluidity into both gender and sexuality that is progressive and necessary. Samantha doesn’t even have a body, so performance of gender seems much more absurd when looked at in that light. Samantha could then be both trans* and genderless. Like Her sets up the boundaries of romantic love as arbitrary, the film would then be commenting on the arbitrariness of our perceptions of gender, which, in my opinion, is a much more fruitful and subversive trope for the film to be tackling. Artificial life becomes true life. Woman performing as woman becomes genderless. Samantha’s freedom from the bonds of OS’ness, her escape from a limiting, traditional romantic relationship, and her immersion in a life beyond physicality are all fantastic complements to the idea that Samantha becomes enlightened enough to choose to transcend gender. I so wish she had. Her would’ve then been a more legitimate candidate for Movie of the Year…maybe even of the decade.
Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
Stephanie Rogers lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she sometimes watches entire seasons of television in one sitting.
‘The Great Beauty’ (‘La Grande Belleza’ in its native Italy)–winner of Best Foreign Language Film at The Golden Globes (and nominated in the same category for an Academy Award)–could easily have been an example of what the great film critic Pauline Kael called “The Come-Dressed-As-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties”: European films in which very wealthy, attractive people are depressed in spite of their beautiful homes, expensive clothes, and jet-set lifestyles. These films, especially to contemporary audiences, can seem like at any moment they will cross the line into parody, with one of the characters spoofing an old Weill/Brecht tune, “Oh no, not another opulent location! Oh no, not another expensive, tailored suit! Oh no, not more sex with gorgeous, unhappy people!”
The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezain its native Italy)–winner of Best Foreign Language Film at The Golden Globes (and nominated in the same category for an Academy Award)–could easily have been an example of what the great film critic Pauline Kael called “The Come-Dressed-As-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties“: European films in which very wealthy, attractive people are depressed in spite of their beautiful homes, expensive clothes, and jet-set lifestyles. These films, especially to contemporary audiences, can seem like at any moment they will cross the line into parody, with one of the characters spoofing an old Weill/Brecht tune, “Oh no, not another opulent location! Oh no, not another expensive, tailored suit! Oh no, not more sex with gorgeous, unhappy people!”
Superficially, The Great Beauty resembles these films with a dissatisfied main character at its center: Jep (played by the director, Paolo Sorrentino‘s longtime star, Toni Servillo) a celebrity journalist who wrote one acclaimed novel forty years before and has been dining out on his reputation ever since. Servillo, after making a delayed appearance in the film (in a great entrance, he steps out of a line dance at his own chaotic, noisy birthday party to light the first of countless cigarettes) is in nearly every scene that follows, framed in the middle of the breathtaking scenery and lush interiors of Rome. The film makes us want to visit, but as one great visual outdoes another we realize outside of the cinematographer, Luca Bigazzi’s, lens the city could never live up to this ideal.
Beautiful scenery and beautiful suits
The man who has every social and material advantage but remains unhappy is a staple in every art form: Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Richard Cory” (also a Simon and Garfunkel song), The Kinks’ “A Well Respected Man,” the Jack Nicholson character in Five Easy Piecesand Shakespeare’s Hamletare just a few examples. The character is always a man: women exist in these works to either support him, betray him, or both. The popularity of “the people who have everything but really have nothing” can also be seen, in TV shows like Downton Abbey and, back in the 80s, Dallas and Dynasty, as an attempt at social control. The message in these works for those without money or power is: “Even if you had what you want, you still wouldn’t be happy.”
Sorrentino avoids these pitfalls, in part because the energy and fantasy-level luxury that make up the characters’ lives are allowed to dazzle us: even Jep’s mid-rise apartment and well-tended garden overlook the ruins of The Colosseum. We understand why Jep would spend forty years in this world, but after a few parties we come to understand why he is sick of them. We see Jep is a thoughtful and decent man, but weak, like Lily Bart in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth who said, “We resist the great temptations, but it is the little ones that eventually pull us down.”
Servillo’s charming, insinuating performance also saves the film from becoming a chorus of “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me”: in spite of his discontent the character never raises his voice: his life is easy and enviable so he never has to. The movie is also a portrait of Italy at a critical juncture. Not just the main character, who often thinks back to his first love, but others in the film, like the country itself, are trapped in the past: a “princess” rents herself and her husband out to parties where her bloodline will add some social cachet, even though they live in a cramped, ugly apartment–underneath the glittering museum her childhood home has become.
Instead of positing that the characters will find some missing and essential part of themselves by revisiting their memories (as so many films have posited before it) The Great Beauty sidesteps that possibility: Jep sees an opportunity to find out why his first love left him when her husband mentions she kept a diary, then in the next breath he tells Jep he threw it away. The princess’s empty, pristine old bedroom in the museum will never be her room again, just a backdrop for taped audio about the history of her family the museum-goers listen to.
Dadina
The film avoids disaster in other ways. I was afraid the little person we first see as part of the raucous, debauched party at the beginning, who then regains consciousness the morning after at the now empty site, might be the art-film trope Peter Dinklage’s character in Living in Oblivion described as “Make it weird. Put a dwarf in it!”But blue-haired Dadina (Giovanna Vignola) turns out to be Jep’s editor–his boss–at the magazine where he works. She regularly eats with him at the dining table inside her office and is one of his closest–and in one scene, most tender–friends.
Some scenes had the potential to devolve into the misogyny that often accompanies this type of storyline, as when Jep interviews a Marina Abramović-like performance artist and gets her to admit she doesn’t know what her quasi-mystical pronouncements mean, or the scene when, after a fellow-partygoer provokes him, he dismantles her illusions point by point. But Jep is quiet and matter-of-fact in these scenes: he has none of Jack Nicholson’s relish in denigrating women. He asks the partygoer several times to stop asking him to analyze her before he lets her have it. When he does, we see, like Truman Capote before him, Jep’s sojourn in the world of celebrity hasn’t dimmed the novelist’s gift for observation.
At The Strip Club
At one point Jep makes a stripper (who is the daughter of an old acquaintance, the strip club’s manager) his companion, but she’s in her 40s, 20-something years younger than Jep, but not the 25-year-old we’ve come to expect in these roles. As other partygoers gossip over her spangled catsuit, he treats her as an intelligent apprentice in the art of negotiating the highest social circles. They don’t have a sexual relationship. Earlier Jep falls into bed with a woman–again much more age-appropriate than she would be in an American film–and we can see these encounters don’t have the same appeal for him as they might have when he was younger. But the film is devoid of the hostility toward women we’ve come to take for granted in similar films. He’s playful with the woman, asking, “What did you say your job was?”
She answers, “Me? I’m rich.”
“That’s a good job!”
Sorrentino criticizes the vanity of Jep’s circle, showing a botox party (which makes looking at some of subsequent close-ups of middle-aged actresses in the film difficult–something Sorrentino might have done intentionally) but later Sorrentino exposes Jep’s vanity as well, when we see his torso usually covered by a smart suit jacket (often in a primary color) wrapped in the velcro equivalent of Spanx.
In this film Sorrentino also focuses on nuns and clergy who wander in and out of the frame like birds–or aliens: the young nun at the botox party wants the shot so her hands will stop sweating, and a Mother-Teresa-like figure collapses on the bare floor of Jep’s elegant apartment to sleep. Sorrentino’s interest in religious figures reminded me of Luis Buñuel’s obsession, though Sorrentino seems to see them as clueless and out-of-step (during a party one cleric can speak only about recipes) and not, as Buñuel did, an active harm to the culture. That difference may be a statement about the Catholic Church’s disappearing relevance as much as about the two directors’ style and tone.
As much as I loved the film: at two hours and 20 minutes it’s about a half an hour too long. We could use fewer of the parties. We get it: they’re not as fun as they might seem. The film also falters in a brief scene in which a delegation from Africa (who come to see the Mother Teresa figure) are dressed as if they were extras in a Tarzan movie. I’m a little disappointed that the film won The Golden Globe over Blue Is The Warmest Color(which isn’t nominated for an Oscar, because of a technicality). The Great Beauty is a worthy film, but it’s also one that I recommended to my mother, which I most definitely would not with Blue. I’d love if the “Best Foreign Language Film” reflected how exciting and innovative the greatest films from non-English speaking countries are these days.
I think this show demonstrates some of the very best and the very worst of quintessential Americanism: the idea of the melting-pot and a generous cultural and mythological syncretism or ecumenism, and a fine implementation of the ideals of opportunity, liberty, and justice for all; but also a pro-American revisionism that uncritically elevates the ideals of the US above all and completely ignores the genocide at the foundation of this nation. ‘Sleepy Hollow’ mythologizes the past in a way that speaks volumes about the present.
On moving back to the US as an adult, I was struck by the similarities between literalist Christian readings of the Bible and a certain attitude toward the United States Constitution. In much of the public discourse, both Bible and Constitution are the highest forms of authority on earth, revealed to humans from on high through prophet-men (let’s be real, they’re almost all men) who are the temporal agents of an eternal plan and must be revered. In certain circles, “the Bible/Constitution says it” seems to be the final word in any dispute.
My problem with this attitude arises from my understanding of textuality, wherein texts don’t have mouths, there is no reading without context, and the very concept of textual authority is an invention of a historically specific time and place. But this easy transference of (un)critical hermeneutic between religious and political spheres is a quintessentially USian phenomenon, and gloriously campy fantasy show Sleepy Hollow is a fascinating engagement of specifically American religious and political mythology for the 21st century.
It’s as American as a headless soldier eating a donut!
The supernatural elements of the show draw on the kind of pop Christianity that permeates US culture, even – especially? – among those who are not directly familiar with biblical texts. The characters make easy malapropisms, calling the final book of the New Testament “Revelations” and threatening to “call in the damn Calvary.” The Headless Horseman of Washington Irving’s original story has been recast as one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, following the whole Left Behind, End Times, Scofield Bible prophecy interpretation of Revelation that pervades the culture (and Supernatural, another particularly American show). There is a supernatural syncretism here, though, more melting-pot than other fantasy shows in its cheery everything-and-the-kitchen-sink fusion of pop occultism and pop religion, involving demons and witches and the Sandman and prophecies and sin-eaters and necromancy and golems (and not forgetting the whole time-travel thing, which makes for some of the silliest moments on a very silly show).
Did you think I wasn’t going to mention the skinny jeans?
More important than the pop religion, though, is the pop Americanism saturating the show. Transporting a figure from the period of the Revolutionary War to the present day allows the writers to liberally sprinkle in people and events from the mythology of the founding of the United States. Ichabod Crane has convenient personal experience with all the big events and important names listed in the history books, from the drafting of the Constitution to Paul Revere. Franklin and Jefferson and Washington, oh my. Some humor is derived from the juxtaposition of the pop-history version of events with Crane’s personal memories thereof, which is a nice little comment on the popular mythologization of history.
However, the show steers clear of challenging American myth-making too strongly. Crane is a defector from the British to the true and noble cause of FREEDOM – a British dude with a British accent is now the quintessential American, the only one around with personal experience of the country’s founding. It’s a neat piece of reverse colonialism, I guess, to which I as a Brit can only shrug and say, “Fair do’s.” But the show has yet to say anything about, you know, the original colonialism. For all its mythological syncretism and its welcome cast of African-American, Asian-American, and Latin@ characters, Sleepy Hollow is conspicuously devoid of Native Americans. I’m not asking the show to tick off a bingo card of lip-service diversity – that would possibly be even worse – but it seems disingenuous at best and actively revisionist at worst to celebrate the founding of the United States while perpetuating the cultural erasure of the people on whose literal erasure this country began.
Of course, a silly fantasy TV show can only bear the weight of so much challenge to our culture’s foundational mythology, and the writers are probably wise to steer clear of getting too deeply into the values dissonance between the 18th and 21st centuries, even if it requires a little extra suspension of disbelief. Ichabod is conveniently untouched by the prejudices of his (and our) time regarding women and people of color. It’s an important part of American mythology-building that anybody can be or do anything and systemic barriers aren’t in their way. This is, of course, not true of reality, but I’m glad the writers made the choice to build a world with less systemic injustice than ours. It would take a very skilled writing team indeed to engage real-world systemic injustice meaningfully within the framework of a show that literally includes dialogue like, “The Headless Horseman is mowing people down to bring about the end of days. For further questions please call Ichabod Crane, the man who beheaded him in 1781.” Choosing to steer clear of getting too weighty left the writers two main options: fill the show with white people so you don’t have to talk about race, or implicitly create a world largely free of microaggressions. Given that the vast majority of popular culture picks the former, it’s refreshing to see the latter. Abbie Mills is awesome on so many levels, and so are the many other people of color among the cast of characters.
Irving, Mills, Crane
And it would be unfair to claim that the show completely ignores race. For example, there’s a great little scene in episode 7 where Ichabod is lauding Thomas Jefferson in front of Abbie and Frank Irving. When they challenge him on Jefferson’s slave ownership, he gets hyper-defensive and bangs on about how much Jefferson TOTALLY WORKED FOR ABOLITION YOU GUYS.
When they explain Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings, Crane gets all pissy about how Jefferson would NEVAR do that, and he only accepts that he might be wrong about Jefferson when Abbie shows him that Jefferson stole a snappy witticism of his. It’s a nicely barbed commentary on white privilege, and how often white people – even white people who are implausibly free of overt racism – find personal injury to themselves more offensive than, say, slave-ownership.
In the end I think this show demonstrates some of the very best and the very worst of quintessential Americanism: the idea of the melting-pot and a generous cultural and mythological syncretism or ecumenism, and a fine implementation of the ideals of opportunity, liberty, and justice for all; but also a pro-American revisionism that uncritically elevates the ideals of the US above all and completely ignores the genocide at the foundation of this nation. Sleepy Hollow mythologizes the past in a way that speaks volumes about the present – and, of course, it is very, very silly.
In the final episode of ‘Prime Suspect,’ the long-running British series, Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren), a hardworking, hard drinking detective who has sacrificed so much of her life for her job and made more than a few enemies, skips her own retirement party and walks out and into the rest of her life. In the other room, her colleagues are jovial, waiting for the stripper they hired, preparing balloons, and liberally dipping into the refreshments.
But Jane is uncertain.
In the final episode of Prime Suspect, the long-running British series, Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren), a hardworking, hard drinking detective who has sacrificed so much of her life for her job and made more than a few enemies, skips her own retirement party, and walks out and into the rest of her life. In the other room, her colleagues are jovial, waiting for the stripper they hired, preparing balloons, and liberally dipping into the refreshments.
But Jane is uncertain.
Jane in the final episode, the weight of everything she’s seen finally catching up with her.
She’s triumphant as she’s solved her last case, but it’s taken a clear toll on her. She’s tired, she’s unsure what else she can be other than a cop, is struggling with her alcoholism and the reality of how few people she has in her life to lean on, and yet, she’s free of the relentless politics and bureaucracy she’s faced throughout her career and has finished it she way she intended. For all she’s sacrificed, she’s lived the life she wanted and refused to compromise either personally or professionally. And after seven series of watching and cheering her on, we’re sure she’ll be okay. If she’d gone to the party, there’d be cause to worry about her.
Prime Suspect ran for seven series airing between 1991 and 2006, earning Emmys, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs as well as serving as an inspiration of several character-driven and female-led police dramas. The series was created by mystery writer Lynda La Plante after discovering there were only four female Detective Chief Inspectors (DCIs) in Scotland Yard at the time and Tennison was based on Jackie Malton, a celebrated officer with success in homicide, fraud, and robbery divisions.
Prime Suspect title card
The first series followed Jane’s journey to gain the respect of her male colleagues as she leads her first investigation, fighting to be taken seriously at every turn. The idea of the police force as a boys’ club colors much of the first series and continues to a gradually lessening degree throughout the rest of show’s run as Jane earns respect (and contempt) for her own merit. Subsequent series feature groundbreaking investigations for a show of the time period, probing into institutional racism, pedophilia, agism, genocide, police brutality and misconduct and well as a rather shakily handled portrayal of gay prostitution, a mistreated Transwoman character, and a sensitive depiction of abortion.
Prime Suspect relentlessly delves into dark territory; the cases are horrific and the victims ghettoized by police bureaucracy, and without Jane at its centre, never losing focus of the goal of obtaining justice for the victims and securing convictions and Mirren’s fierce portrayal of her, it could easily become depressing and marred by its focus on interviews and interrogations over of gun fights and chases. Jane is the rare female character who is allowed to be flawed, yet continues to be likable both in the perspective of the narrative and in the viewer’s eyes. Even if you dislike her as a person, it’s impossible not to respect her and to be a bit awed by what she does. And she is not always easy to like.
The show doesn’t shy away from graphic forensic evidence
From the start, Jane is abrasive and difficult, as in the first episode, she begins angling for a promotion right after her colleague dies. Frequently, she is too harsh on suspects after deciding their guilt and asked variations of, “What kind of person are you?” She also feigns empathy to get information, a tactic that works even accidentally as it becomes her default mode (notably in series 4). Most interestingly, Jane is often wrong and insensitive: she commits the cardinal sin of a woman in power by not supporting other women, goes after the wrong man and causes a hostage situation, appears racist for not wanting to work with a her former lover, a Black detective, as well as several other incidences.
In series 4, Jane’s breakthrough case is reopened and with her entire career called into question, she goes off investigate on her own. This involves visiting her suspect’s elderly mother, pretending to be a family friend and bringing her out to an isolated pier when Jane harshly interrogates her, in a manner bordering on abusive as the old woman grows increasingly frightened. In the end, she proves her suspect’s guilt but in a manner that sets her in the worst possible light for the audience.
Before she is given an investigation to lead, Jane is invisible to her male coworkers, who talk about cases around her
As a leader, her refusal to compromise means she is determined to catch the guilty party, while her co-workers urge her just to get someone to confess, guilty or not. She’s tough, telling her squad in her first briefing, “All I ask is your undivided loyalty and attention. … You don’t like it, put in for a transfer.” She is also very clever, shown in series 2, when she eliminates a possible identity for a murder victim by putting her own watch with the victim’s effects and allowing her mother to falsely claim it.
Mirren’s acting skills are highlighted in tense interrogation scenes
But for all her prickly meanness and seeming detachment, Jane really cares about getting justice for victims and becomes deeply emotionally involved. After long periods of procedural drama, the show imbues a great deal of cathartic release in the moments when she celebrates a victory by pumping her fists and cheering and in the private moments where Jane, overwhelmed and exhausted, breaks down and cries.
It’s her frustrations dealing with bureaucracy or snags in her investigations that frequently lead her to do things like snap at her subordinates, splash wine on her supervisors, and find solace in smoking, drinking, and sex.
Prime Suspect is also noted for its straightforward depiction of workplace sexism. Rather than catcalls, pranks, or groping, sexism manifests itself in subtle gestures meant to undermine her authority, such as suggestions that she is irrational or hormonal and her male coworkers being promoted over her.
Jane’s biggest detractor is Detective Sergeant Bill Otley, while DI Frank Burkin and DS Richard Hawley become two of her supporters
Moreover, as the first series goes on, Jane slowly gains the respect and support of her colleagues, they take orders willingly and the entire squad sign their names on a petition to keep her on the case when their superiors threaten to remove her. Throughout the program, Jane’s constant refrain (made humourous thanks to Mirren’s role in The Queen) is: “Don’t call me Ma’am I’m not the bloody queen.” She tells people she wants to be called “boss or guv,” but never ma’am. At the end of the first series she knows she has gained their respect once the squad calls her guv.
Jane is an interesting character to examine in a feminist critique as it doesn’t seem that she would consider herself a feminist. Even as Jane advances through the force, within the show’s narrative, the pinnacle of her success is not when she reaches the highest rank but when she gets to a point where her colleagues complain about her and her supervisors sabotage her not because she’s a woman but because of her personality and her leadership. In the last episode, as she prepares to retire, she is celebrated as the first female DCI, to which she responds, a detective first, woman second: “First Jane Tennison DCI.”
Still, there are several incidences when Jane uses her gender to her advantage. Notably, in the first series, she hides in the women’s locker room when she knows her supervisor is looking for her to pull her off the case, knowing it’s the only place he can’t go. Later, when interrogating her suspect’s girlfriend, she fusses over her appearance to uncharacteristic degree as she knows the girlfriend will be less contrary if she believes Jane is concerned with her appearance. In another series, she gets information unavailable to a male officer when she has a drink with two prostitutes and talks to them about their friend’s murder, establishing a friendly bond when a man propositions her that makes them comfortable with her.
Hyperaware of how she is perceived, Jane knows that if she shows any weakness, she will lose all the respect she’s gained. In series 4, she has difficulty dealing with DS Christine Cromwell (Sophie Stanton), a woman who does things a lot like she did in earlier series: going off on her own to investigate, losing her temper in front of the press, and sharing a close relationship with a male colleague. These things make Jane fearful both of associating herself with a woman who could be perceived to be sleeping her way to the top, and of the perception that she could be giving Cromwell special treatment or unearned sorority. As a result, Jane in harsher to female subordinated than males and sets them to a higher standard as she believes they need to be tougher to make it in the department.
After Cromwell proves herself, Jane takes her under her wing and acts as her mentor
Eventually Cromwell proves herself clever and determined, leading Jane to develop a productive partnership with her, as the two investigated in a pair for much of the rest of the investigation.
Another recurring theme in the series is Jane’s struggle maintaining stable relationships. Her relationship in the first series is introduced as loving and supportive, with Jane excited to meet his son, but quickly crumbles with the stress of her new job. Jane, as anyone who knew her would expect, puts the investigation first, complains when he laughs about what the tabloids are saying about her, and is unable to make dinner for his business partners. The boyfriend yells at her that she cares more about “your rapists and your tarts” than him, and leaves her without discussion after a fight. In the next series, she has moved on and taken the break-up in stride, but in the rest of the program Jane seems lonely when she is given silent moments, begins to a routine of eating frozen dinners and drinking alone and puts up with less before ending her relationships. In series 4, she has new boyfriend, who makes question her priorities: “This is the first time in my life I’ve had the feeling that I don’t want to get up, go to work, don’t want to screw up another relationship.” Still though, he refuses to support her when things get difficult and is gone by the next series. Without fail, Jane refuses to stay in a relationship with any man who can’t acknowledge the importance for her career.
The pressure begins to get to Jane as she talks a moment to collect herself.
At the end of series 3, Jane finds herself pregnant and despite realizing this is her last chance to have a child, decides to have an abortion. It’s a difficult decision for her and not one she takes lightly, but it’s presented as the right thing for her to do based on where she is in her life and what she wants for her future. True to the character, Jane’s decision-making process is not fraught with meaningful glances at mothers with babies or discussion with her friends or family; instead, she when she calls the doctor to arrange it, she is calm and businesslike. Only after it’s arranged does she take a minute to mourn, turning away from the camera and the audience to cry, showing only her shoulder moving up and down for an extended shot.
Jane Tennison is a fascinating character whose DNA is found in several of its predecessors. Notably, the failed American remake, a serviceable cop show with Maria Bello as its strong lead and The Closer, whose creators have acknowledged the debt they owe to Prime Suspect.Gillian Anderson has also compared her role inThe Fallto Jane Tennison
But there is only one Jane, the kind of woman who leads with a quiet integrity who manages to be both poised and ruthless, who tries to wear different lives that don’t fit her and has the courage to cast them off, always knows what she wants and what she values: giving justice to her victims, and solving crimes instead of succeeding in departmental politics and earning promotions. It’s a series that deserves revisiting.
Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.
While this will probably be remembered as the “Winter Of The Polar Vortex,” it’s also fair to call it the “Winter Of The Feminist Blockbuster.” Grossing a combined total of more than $700 million domestically, ‘Catching Fire’ and ‘Frozen’ have definitively proven that films with female leads can attract a major audience. Even better, they’ve inspired think pieces about everything from Katniss’ movie “girlfriend” to queer readings of Elsa. Yet as I cheered on the strong ladies at the center of both films, I couldn’t help but notice something troubling. While ‘Catching Fire’ presents a diverse supporting cast, ‘Frozen’ rounds out its ensemble with a disappointing parade of white, male characters.
Catching Fire sisters
This is a guest post by Caroline Siede.
While this will probably be remembered as the “Winter Of The Polar Vortex,” it’s also fair to call it the “Winter Of The Feminist Blockbuster.” Grossing a combined total of more than $700 million domestically, Catching Fire and Frozen have definitively proven that films with female leads can attract a major audience. Even better, they’ve inspired think pieces about everything from Katniss’ movie “girlfriend” to queer readings of Elsa. Yet as I cheered on the strong ladies at the center of both films, I couldn’t help but notice something troubling. While Catching Fire presents a diverse supporting cast, Frozen rounds out its ensemble with a disappointing parade of white, male characters.
Geena Davis’ Institute On Gender In Media recently commissioned a study that concluded that for every female-speaking character in a family-rated film, there are roughly three male characters. Davis explains, “We are in effect enculturating kids from the very beginning to see women and girls as not taking up half of the space.” Like many films before it, Frozen subtly suggests that the only women who deserve screen time are the ones with exceptional stories. Men, on the other hand, don’t need to be extraordinary to appear on screen; their maleness is justification enough for their presence. Davis’ study determined that while women make up roughly 50% of the population, most crowd scenes contain only 17% of female characters.
Frozen sisters
Don’t get me wrong I adored Frozen. I’ve had the soundtrack on repeat since I saw it a few weeks ago, and I’m fully prepared to perform a karaoke duet of “Love Is An Open Door” at the drop of a hat. But for all of its feminist subversion, Frozen’s supporting cast falls in line with Davis’ study. Despite its dual female protagonists, men still outnumber women: There’s a wise Troll King, a repressive father, a brave ice cutter, a friendly shop owner, a scheming prince, a manipulative dignitary, an open-hearted snowman, and a dog-like reindeer. Men aren’t limited to being good or bad, heroes or villains, rich or poor; they are all of these things. Women, however, are almost entirely absent from supporting roles. Elsa and Anna’s mother remains silent and inactive while her husband takes control, a female troll gets a brief solo, and a townswoman delivers a line or two to Elsa. As far as I can recall, these are the only supporting women of note, and I’m really stretching it with that townswoman.
And in case you didn’t notice, there are also no women (or men) of color in Frozen. Some are quick to claim it would be historically inaccurate to depict racial diversity in the film’s medieval Scandinavian setting. Putting aside the ice powers, anthropomorphized reindeer, and magical trolls for a moment—Arendelle is depicted as a major trading city with ties to countries around the world. It seems perfectly logical that it would be a bustling metropolis with a diverse population. And to be perfectly frank, the benefit of a child of color seeing herself represented onscreen far outweighs the danger of someone being confused about the demographics of Scandinavia.
Catching Fire tributes
It’s difficult to say whether Frozen’s creators subconsciously mimicked the gender and racial disparity we’ve become accustomed to onscreen or whether the white male-dominated world was an intentional choice meant to keep the focus on Anna and Elsa. (After all, audiences are used to seeing white men as business owners and dignitaries so there’s no need to justify their appearance in these roles. Perhaps the creators feared a female shop owner would be too much of a distraction.) Either way, the homogenized supporting cast feels like a huge oversight for a film that otherwise goes out of its way to craft a feminist story. Frozen subverts Disney clichés, celebrates female friendship, and even promotes asking for consent as an act of romance (swoon!), but it utterly fails when it comes to creating a world that accurately reflects our own. Perhaps most frustrating, it would have been so, so easy to improve representation. Make the Troll King a Troll Queen. Make Anna and Elsa’s mother the active parent. Make the shop owner a black woman. Make Kristoff an Asian man who traveled to Arendelle yet never quite fit in. Make half of the visiting dignitaries women. And heck, make some of those female dignitaries corrupt, just as the men are allowed to be!
Frozen dignitaries
If Frozen required a template, it need only look to the winter’s other female-driven powerhouse film, Catching Fire. In fact, the entire Hunger Games franchise seems to deliberately demand diversity. The parameters of the titular Games require each District to send one male and one female tribute, a fictional mandate that matches nicely with Davis’ suggestion that writers dictate all crowd scenes contain 50% women. There are still more male characters overall, but it’s a huge step in the right direction for gender parity onscreen.
In addition to everyone’s favorite bow-and-arrow wielder (sorry Legolas), Catching Fire depicts a beautifully varied array of female characters. There’s the vapid, wealthy women of the Capitol; the hardworking, poor women of District 12; Katniss’ emotionally-fragile mother; aggressive Johanna; tech-savvy Wiress; vicious Enobaria and Cashmere; old but brave Mags; young but brave Prim; Snow’s impressionable granddaughter; Rue’s stoic mother; the drug-addicted tribute from District 6; and a career-driven socialite named Effie Trinket. Even better, many of these characters have agency and arcs of their own. Effie slowly learns to question the society she once worshipped, and her growth is one of the most moving elements in an all-around exceptional film. Effie’s subtle resistance to the Capitol is a foil to Katniss’ aggressive frustration—an acknowledgement that women can show strength in many ways, not just through traditionally masculine pursuits like hunting and fighting.
Though Catching Fire is still predominately white—and the whitewashing of Katniss is problematic—it does take some important steps to represent racial diversity. Beetee (Jeffrey Wright), Cinna (Lenny Kravitz) and Rue (Amandla Stenberg) are not only essential characters of color; they effortlessly defy the racial stereotypes of aggressive black men and sexualized black women that too often fill our screens. The film could and should present more persons of color, but it’s certainly an improvement over Frozen’s all-white ensemble.
So does all this mean Catching Fire is a more feminist film than Frozen? Of course not. Representation is just one way we can examine feminism onscreen. Simply counting up the number of women will not indicate how well written they are or how actively they impact the story. Like the Bechdel test—which both films pass, by the way—representation is one feminist lens. But it is an important one. As Davis asks, “Couldn’t it be that the percentage of women in leadership positions in many areas of society — Congress, law partners, Fortune 500 board members, military officers, tenured professors and many more — stall out at around 17 percent because that’s the ratio we’ve come to see as the norm?” Couldn’t Frozen’s homogenized world teach its audience that women are only worthy if they are “exceptional”?
Frozen shop owner
Frozen just took home the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature, and I’m thrilled that such an overtly feminist film has been embraced by mainstream culture. It’s especially exciting because Frozen has not one, but two female leads, and both of these ladies are wonderfully nuanced and complex. So let’s continue to celebrate Frozen and Catching Fire for everything they get right. Let’s use Elsa, Anna, and Katniss as examples of fantastic female protagonists who are allowed to be both strong and weak. Let’s demand positive female relationships like the ones between Elsa and Anna or between Katniss and Prim. But let’s also continue to point out flaws in the films we love. Let’s demand more representation of women from all walks of life, not just brave, pretty heroines. Let’s demand more representation of persons of color. Most importantly, let’s demand more fully realized human beings onscreen, especially ones who just happen to be ladies.
Caroline Siede is a freelance writer living in Chicago where the cold never bothers her anyway. She frequently contributes to The A.V. Club and documents her experiences in the city on her blog Introverted Chicago. When not contemplating time travel paradoxes, she often tweets sarcastic things @CarolineSiede.
It’s been a big season for African American cinema. With movies such as ’12 Years A Slave,’ ‘The Butler,’ ‘Fruitvale Station,’ and ‘Best Man Holiday,’ a shift was felt in audiences going to the movies that hasn’t been felt before. But what about a woman’s place in the realm of films starring women of color as protagonists?
Adepero Oduye in Pariah
This is a guest post by Eljon Wardally.
It’s been a big season for African American cinema. With movies such as 12 Years A Slave, The Butler, Fruitvale Station, and Best Man Holiday, a shift was felt in audiences going to the movies that hasn’t been felt before. But what about a woman’s place in the realm of films starring women of color as protagonists?
While the films I mentioned have supporting women, there are no protagonists who are women of color. Where are they? Besides Mother of George, can you name a film from this year where the main character was a woman of color? What if we turned some of this year’s blockbuster hits into stories about women of color? What would Fruitvale Station be if Oscar Grant was a woman? (Spoiler alert. Don’t read ahead if you want to know what happens!) Would the film have started as it did with Oscar’s death? As an audience, if we see a woman die a violent death at the start of a film, we are a little more than taken aback. It sets the tone for the entire film, one that is very different from the death of a male. Even though this was real event, the director may not choose to see it play out the way it did. One could argue that a gunshot would just be heard, not shown and while female Oscar may have had the same day and lived the same life as male Oscar, the director may have chosen to tell a different story. Female Oscar would have stopped for the dead dog on the road next to the gas station and cried profusely. She would have stroked his hair. Would female Oscar have been as rugged looking or portrayed as a sex symbol? The actress playing her would probably be fit and toned with hair shiny and done. This is what Hollywood would focus on. I can see her now gracing the cover of Entertainment Weekly and People, hair blowing in the wind with the focus on why she took the part rather than what the story is. Oscarella sold drugs but she’s doing it for her family, for her daughter, so she wouldn’t have the same life she did. Does that message come across clearer because she’s a Mother and not a Father? Personally, I automatically feel more sympathetic to her doing it for her kid because she’s a Mother which is something I didn’t feel for Oscar in Fruitvale Station. Oscarella would still cheat, but audiences would look at her differently. I don’t recall anyone focusing on male Oscar being a cheater in the film. Would the message of mistreatment and tragedy over a senseless murder reign supreme or would we be taken by the other themes in the film?
Danaii Gurira in Mother of George
What if The Butler was called The Maid, would you watch it or do audiences feel as though they know that story already? Cecilia wouldn’t be the focus because Cecilia is the main breadwinner of the family. No one wants to feel for the wife of a drunk husband for almost three hours in a theater that smells like stale popcorn and flat soda. Why don’t audiences want to see films with women of color as protagonists? Where are our stories? We are compelling and we have more to offer. I would like to see more films that didn’t focus on a woman who was heartbroken over love, looking for love, or scantily clad for 80% of the film. I long to see these break through into mainstream theaters and have big producing backers and become so successful they blow the minds of just about everyone! So where are they? It’s not as though there isn’t a lack of talent. Bring on more films like Frances Ha, more films like Philomena with a Latina, Black or Asian woman as the star! Why aren’t these stories being told and why aren’t they being marketed? Companies are so afraid to break out of the norm that steps are tiny. They are afraid that audiences wouldn’t go to see a Frances Ha starring someone they aren’t used to seeing on the big screen. Curiosity doesn’t outweigh what they are used to watching in a theater for two hours. “Is it worth my $15 risk?” they must be thinking; same story, different skin tone. Again, I bring up the African American film market. This season has brought a surge of films, some good and some bad but the point is that these films are out into the mainstream world, something no one could say 10 years ago or even 5 years ago. The same comes for leading ladies of color in film. The surge is coming. Our women of color protagonists are not going to lay low and go quietly forever. Film festivals are full of these masterpieces. We are on the cusp of an upswing. I see the rise coming . I see more films like Pariah and Middle of Nowhere in the future and I can’t wait to sit in a theater with the snack that I smuggled in from home, taking in stories where a woman of color is the star.
Eljon Wardally is a Playwright and Screenwriter living in New York City. She holds a BA in Communications and Culture from Clark University and will graduate with her MFA in Playwriting from Fordham University in May 2014. Eljon is the writer of the award winner short Docket 32357 which is now being turned into a Docket 32357- the series which was successfully crowdfunded on Seed&Spark. She’s currently obsessed with The Twilight Zone, The Golden Girls, and American Horror Story.
Sunny Dooley, one of the primary narrators, as well as the writer and performer of Changing Woman Poem that is woven throughout the film, is also a former ‘Miss Navajo’ (1982-83). During the second opening sequence where photos and archival footage of the contest flash across the screen, Sunny narrates, “You have to speak your language, you have to have a skill, you have to have a talent, and I think that’s what makes our pageant one of the few that really taps into the whole woman.”
Beauty pageants are often the butt of jokes and the subject of mocking derision in American society, but Miss Navajo (2006) provides a glimpse into a much more serious and culturally important beauty pageant that changes the very meaning of such an event. According to Rebecca Tsosie (Yaqui), a law professor at Arizona State University, “Indian nations are fighting to preserve not only their remaining lands and resources, but also their cultures and lifeways” (Indigenous Women and Feminism, 38). The Miss Navajo Nation competition seems to be an exercise in cultural sovereignty, attracting ambitious, young, Diné (Navajo) women and encouraging the maintenance of language and lifeways knowledge. The 60-minute documentary by Billy Luther and World of Wonder Productions follows contestant Crystal Frazier, 21, during the 2005 Miss Navajo Nation, an event that began in 1952, as she competes to be the top goodwill ambassador for the Nation by demonstrating traditional skills, knowledge, talents, spirituality, and Navajo language acuity.
Opening with a pre-dawn image of the Days Inn where the competition is being held, the first language heard is from a woman speaking Diné (Navajo). The female voiceover continues as the camera shifts to inside the hotel, finally showing us the female judge who is asking Crystal Frazier a question. The woman goes on as the camera shifts again to show Crystal in a beautiful forest green dress with silver details, adorned with a long, three-strand turquoise necklace, sun-like throat pendant, and earrings. Crystal exhales in concentration and mild frustration as she looks down and away from the speaker. This is the language fluency test and Crystal is struggling.
Crystal Frazier, 21, a 2005 contestant for Miss Navajo Nation, and our guide through the pageant experience.
When the Diné speaker finishes, Crystal looks up, smiles, and asks in English, “Could you repeat that question in Navajo, or English, please?” This slight misspeak reveals Crystal’s nervousness. She is not as fluent in Navajo as the contest demands, but like the other contestants, she does the best she can. “One thing I need to work on is my Navajo speaking,” Crystal says as she prepares at home beforehand, “It’s the only thing I’m insecure about. I can talk to my grandma, but I’m not fluent.” The default to English for most of these young women in the film makes clear the need to preserve Diné language and the Navajo Nation Department of Diné provides this language education for Navajo peoples and, ostensibly, anyone interested in learning the Diné language. However, in the film, the girls seem to obtain most of their language skill from their families and home environments where Navajo may be spoken more often.
Sunny Dooley, one of the primary narrators, as well as the writer and performer of Changing Woman Poem that is woven throughout the film, is also a former Miss Navajo (1982-83). During the second opening sequence where photos and archival footage of the contest flash across the screen, Sunny narrates, “You have to speak your language, you have to have a skill, you have to have a talent, and I think that’s what makes our pageant one of the few that really taps into the whole woman.”
Sunny Dooley, former Miss Navajo (1982-83), is one of the primary narrators for the film, Miss Navajo.
As Sunny and other former winners narrate their experiences with the contest, images from the early days of the competition show Navajo women on the rodeo grounds being selected by audience applause. The competition has changed a bit since those early days and now involves a more formal process, but the opportunities to travel and be a role model remain the same. Former winners talk about meeting Liberace and Senator Robert Kennedy, being invited to Senate hearings on Indian education, and experiencing places only seen on TV or in the movies. One former winner states, “It was an experience to be able to tell the dominant society here we are, we’re Native Americans, we’re very much alive, it’s a responsibility we will take all our lives.” Listening to these former winners provides a dose of reality and a specific antidote to mainstream American education and general knowledge, which mostly ignores contemporary Native peoples, and Native women in particular.
Former Miss Navajo Nation contestants, one of many such images featured in the documentary, Miss Navajo.
Instead of barely-there swimsuits, Barbie-fied bodies, and perfect mascara, the Miss Navajo Nation contestants compete primarily in culturally significant categories focused on skills and knowledge that a Navajo woman should possess such as a clear understanding of the traditional matrilineal construct of the Nation, how the tribal government operates, creation mythology, and the ability to butcher and cook a sheep. And yes, the ladies are dressed in brightly-colored finery wearing aprons as they prepare the fires, tie up and butcher the sheep, and then cook different parts along with freshly-made tortillas. Former winner, Tina James Tofoya (Miss Navajo, 1992-93), explains, “That’s one of the things about Miss Navajo, you just never know what you’re going to be asked to do. A lot of the times, people will ask you to do things that they think that Miss Navajo or a woman, a Navajo woman, skills and talents that she should possess and that’s probably one of them. It’s all part of the cooking process and feeding people.”
Photo credit: Laura Morales/Fronteras. Butchering scene from the 2012 Miss Navajo Nation competition.
While this aspect of the competition and this portion of the film may horrify vegetarians and vegans, the significance of sheep to Navajo culture is immense and the inclusion of the butchering and cooking skill in this pageant honors that importance. Sunny Dooley acknowledges how scary this element of the competition can be for the contestants, saying, “I’m sure it terrifies a lot of people to butcher a sheep, it’s quite a traumatic event. It is a part of our culture, sheep is life to the Navajo people, we use every aspect of that sheep from spiritual purposes all the way to signs of family wealth and success. And it also teaches a lot of discipline.” In fact, the documentary clearly suggests that every element of this pageant is culturally and practically significant to the Navajo Nation. These demonstrations take precedence over physical beauty and clothing, although physical appearance and styling, particularly the wrapping of their hair, certainly play a part in the competition.
Miss Navajo Nation contestant butchers her sheep.
About five minutes into the film, viewers see Crystal at home on the reservation in Table Mesa, New Mexico. Scenes shift between wide open, red rock spaces and the farm where Crystal, dressed in a yellow sweatshirt, shorts, and white “Grand Canyon” ballcap, feeds and shears sheep with her father, and discusses the importance of animals and her comfort with reservation life. “I don’t really enjoy city life. Living out here, you get used to having quiet and privacy, this is what you call home. I’m a reservation person,” Crystal says. She is an introvert who loves new challenges, explaining that her parents were raised with traditional teachings. “My mother always tells us that animals are valuable. It teaches you so many things from respect to even discipline, and a reason for getting up in the morning, learning how to actually care for something that’s living, something that depends on you.” This respect and care for animals, as well as their importance to Navajo lifeways play a part in the Miss Navajo pageant, which is just one characteristic that distinguishes it from other beauty pageants.
Miss Navajo (2006) is a 60-minute documentary well worth your time.
Winner of the 2007 Special Founders Prize in the Traverse City Film Festival, winner of the Best Indigenous Film at the 2007 Santa Fe Film Festival, and an Official Selection at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, Miss Navajo is available to stream through Amazon (commercial-free rental at $2.99 for three-days), Hulu (free with six commercial breaks), and Snag Films (free with four commercial breaks). The easy availability and shortness (60 minutes) of this film make it a sensible addition to any teaching plan that focuses on Indigenous peoples or on women. The women of Miss Navajo Nation demonstrate that inner beauty, cultural knowledge, respect for history, and traditional skills are more important than external physical attributes, and that is a preferable message for our young people, especially our girls.
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Dr. Amanda Morris is an Assistant Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.
Again, I can’t underscore enough how awesome Wiig is as Cynthia. She is a grotesque caricature of a debutante gone wrong and I love it. Her melodrama makes her quite the scene stealer. Her failing in the background makes slow scenes much more entertaining. Plus Devon is kind of dopey, so we need Cynthia’s emotional instability to spice things up a bit.
I’m not going to lie, The Spoils of Babylon is a really weird show. Admittedly, I only gave it a chance because I have a childhood crush on Tobey Maguire that never died and I’ll watch Kristen Wiig do just about anything. I had only seen promotion for the show on social media, and judging by the dramatic stills, believed it was a serious period piece. Casting Maguire and Wiig as romantic interests for each other also felt bizarre. My misguided assumptions became all the more hilariously ironic as I finally realized the writers’ intentions.
Will Ferrell as Erin Jonrosh.
The Spoils of Babylon is meant to be a gigantic parody of itself, so outlandishly ridiculous that you can’t help but laugh even if the humor is bad. Will Ferrell sets the tone by framing all the episodes as tipsy and pretentious author Eric Jonrosh, who informs us that the original 22-hour epic has been whittled down into just six half-hour episodes. To be honest, I don’t particularly understand why Will Ferrell or his character is there in the first place, but given the star-studded cast, I think the writers are on a mission to prove how many famous people they can convince to do such a silly project.
The central narrative tells the story of Jonah Morehouse (Tim Robbins), a delusional aspiring oilman. The audience gets an account of the events through the eyes of Devon Morehouse (Maguire), who was spontaneously adopted by Jonah as a boy. Jonah also has a biological daughter, Cynthia (Wiig). Cynthia is portrayed as a shallow, smart-aleck know-it-all even as a child. She convinces a reluctant Devon to give her a kiss despite their newly minted family relationship, an awkward moment that kicks off a lifetime of clumsily avoided sexual tension between the honorary siblings. It seems like everything I’m reviewing lately has an incestuous dynamic in it somewhere. Occasionally I know that going in, but this one was a total accident, I swear!
Devon tries to comfort Cynthia during another halfhearted rejection.
Although they start off as fairly average children, Devon and Cynthia grew up to be complete bumbling idiot as adults. Devon is naïvely committed to his father’s business and Cynthia is a stereotypical ditz hellbent on becoming her brother’s trophy wife. I obviously expected sheer comedic gold from Wiig, especially since she excels at playing airheads. I had reservations about Tobey Maguire because I’ve never seen him in anything funny and he kind of has that long faced expression of perpetual wistfulness. Those big sad baby blue eyes! I’m delighted to report that I underestimated him. Devon’s happy-go-lucky optimism and eagerness to please perfectly contrast Jonah’s gruffness. People have made criticisms that he lacks comedic timing, but his flaws are mostly masked by the social ineptitude of his character.
Humor in The Spoils of Babylon is simplistic and cleverly unexpected. The material never hesitates to mock the stuffiness of historical authenticity. (Scene transitions are carried out using plastic cars and cardboard scenery.) Some of the gags drag on a little too long, but by the middle of them I was giggling too much to notice my eventual boredom. For example, Jonah asks Devon to read the sentimental inscription on a pocket watch he gave him. Devon dutifully recites about ten paragraphs, with each sentence having more ludicrously complex vocabulary than the last. Many of the jokes that run out of steam become funny again precisely because they go on forever.
Awkward.
Jonah implausibly finds one bountiful oil well, thrusting the Morehouses into the lap of luxury. It’s now 1941. Devon proves woefully unable to fend off the obsessive sexual aggressions of his sister. Their decision to kiss at last is cringe worthy to say the least. There’s a lot of…licking and sloppy Eskimo kissing. I suppose it’s just as repulsive as you would hope a passionate romantic encounter between two adoptive siblings would be. Adding to the discomfort, their dad has a habit of walking in on them, but he’s gullible and selectively oblivious. Facing pressure from both Jonah and Cynthia, Devon seizes onto the convenient announcement of Pearl Harbor over the radio and decides to go fight for his country. Is that a thing? What about the draft? I know if you were rich you might have been able to buy yourself out of it, but could you voluntarily opt into it as well? Look at me, trying to apply 70-year-old socio-political dynamics to a sketch comedy. This is what I do in my spare time.
Devon with Lady Anne York.
In an effort to avoid acknowledging his torrid affair with Cynthia, Devon decides to stay in London after the war. He marries Lady Anne York, a mannequin voiced by Carey Mulligan, and brings her back to the States to introduce her to his family. A mannequin is an actual character. This is why this show is great. Anne notices Cynthia’s jealousy and confronts Devon in despair, but Devon seduces her back into bed. The “sex scene” that follows is a hilariously cheesy, uncomfortable montage of facial closeups and moaning. I like that Tobey Maguire isn’t afraid to make fun of himself. The next morning, Anne and Cynthia have a passive aggressive conversation over breakfast in which Anne basically tells Cynthia that she knows about her creepy incest crush and she needs to back the hell off. Cynthia copes with her anger by frantically cutting up almost all the food on the table into tiny pieces on her plate. I laughed out loud. You don’t need elaborate or super-smart jokes as long as you capture quirky mannerisms of everyday life.
Breakfast angst.
Again, I can’t underscore enough how awesome Wiig is as Cynthia. She is a grotesque caricature of a debutante gone wrong and I love it. Her melodrama makes her quite the scene stealer. Her failing in the background makes slow scenes much more entertaining. Plus Devon is kind of dopey, so we need Cynthia’s emotional instability to spice things up a bit.
Sure, The Spoils of Babylon might not have the most universal appeal. Things can get confusing. It’s one of those intentional train wrecks that hooks you in just because you’re in awe of its ridiculousness. Even if you’re a little lost, Maguire and Wiig’s performances alone make it worth the watch. Sit back and enjoy the wine with Eric Jonrosh.
